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Friday, November 01, 2013

2104 PBJ Crunch

Back when I was growing up, we
didn't get to eat in the school cafeteria. It was reserved for kids who could
afford it. "Hot lunch" it was called. As in, "Make sure you get
your tickets for hot lunch." The teacher would sell them in the morning
or, later, kids would go to the office on their first recess to buy tickets or
a monthly pass.

Kids in our economic spectrum had
lunch boxes or, at my even lower end, brown bags. At least we had lunch. I was
grateful I had something; even though youthfully resentful I had to pack it to
school in a random grocery or product bag. It would have been nice to have one
of those actually brown lunch-sized bags instead of an old bread or drugstore bag
but, what the hey, at least I had food.

The food was problematic sometimes.
I had two main meals: Boloney sandwich with ketchup on it or peanut butter and
jelly. Both were always on brown-colored bread, what my dad called “wheat
bread,” although it was really just cheap white bread dyed brownish.

Our sack lunches were stored at
room temperature in the back of the classroom so baloney-and-ketchup got a
little warm by the time lunchtime hit in the non-air-conditioned rooms. Did I
mention we lived in a small desert town where the temps typically got up past
100 degrees?

That also made the ketchup soak
through the top piece of bread. Ick. And jelly did the same thing. Peanut
butter and jelly on soaked-through bread. Yum. We had a remedy. Lift up the
soaked-through side and insert potato chips. Crunchy and delicious. Resourceful
Poverty-Repaired PB&J.